March 19th, 2004

Robert arrived at around 4:30. He took a quick nap, while I finished up my work.

We had dinner at Parizade's in Durham, and it was delicious! They had a "Pre-Theater" special that ran from 5:30-6:30, and our reservation was for 6:30. We got in just under the wire. :-)

We had bread. I had a salad and Robert had a mushroom and artichoke soup. We had the same entree, jumbo shrimp and pasta. We also had the same dessert, which was out of this world -- a Banana Rum Neapolitan, I think it was called. Bananas, cream, custard, wafers, and powdered sugar with strawberries, and a raspberry sauce decorating the plate. We had some killer coffee with it. Just yum, yum, yum.

The opera turned out to be just hilarious. I was so pleased that Robert got to see a "fun one" as his first. The ladies in "the chorus" (in the Greek sense) all had short black hair with bangs, and cut off at the shoulders. Several of them looked very masculine. A couple of the "guys" in the male chorus were women.

There was one hilarious character, "Mad Margaret," who looked like Marge Simpson, at least her hair did. Only it was black, with a white stripe up either side. She did some very funny accents, and was just a great character.

We were in the second row, and it made me nervous that the orchestra pit was so wide. If an actor accidentally stepped off the stage, they'd surely die. Needless to say we didn't need the binoculars that Robert made a special trip to his mother's for.